


Electric sheep

by Veraverorum (your_Mother)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Human!zenyatta, M/M, dream - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 17:10:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15514551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/your_Mother/pseuds/Veraverorum
Summary: It was a dream.Zenyatta was almost sure of it. It definitely felt different from everything else he had experienced.





	Electric sheep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lacertae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lacertae/gifts).



> This year too I've managed to make a birthday present for that amazing person that is Lacertae and she seemed to enjoy it, so I hope you too do! :D
> 
>  
> 
> (if I've missed any tags, please let me know)

It was a dream.  
  
Zenyatta was almost sure of it. It definitely felt different from everything else he had experienced.  
  
Not even when the Iris had opened up to him had he felt that way. There but not completely, actually there. Calm, completely calm. Accepting of the logically impossible. Like he could touch the water of the cascade from where he was, under the shade of a great tree.  
  
Zenyatta moved his hand to try it and for the briefest moment that he realized that he wasn't like he remembered himself to be, he wasn't surprised. Just something else to accept. The fingers that used to be of shiny chrome metal were now made of meat, brown skin at its place over them as if he had never been a robot.  
  
That was a funny thought.  
  
He was aware that he was, he had been at a certain point, a robot. Circuits and oil instead of nerves and blood, a metallic chassis protecting his inner core instead of a ribcage and a powerful processor in place of a brain. Yet the body he had now was different, other and not scary. It made him want to laugh. There had been once upon a time an author who wondered if androids dreamed of electric sheep and now Zenyatta had the answer to his doubts. They dreamed of being human.  
  
Moving his fingers, testing them with quick waving movements, inspecting the oval shape of nails, lightened up by the ray of sun filtering through the foliage, how it played in the v shape where the fingers departed from the palm. It was new yet familiar. It was pleasant.  
  
More testing was in order. He tried to pick up something. Something, something… there was a long braid of black hair in his lap. He tried. It wasn't the same thing. While in his previous robot form, aided by his sensors he could exactly weight an object, now in this human body he could only have a vague idea of weight. Light, that was it. But the feeling of it was completely different. It was astounding. For how much his sensors had been advanced, they never were able to replicate, transmit texture so finely.  
  
He pulled the braid. Out of curiosity, lightly. The little pang of hurt was immediate in his head, both for his nerves reacting and well, because the braid of hair was attached there, to his head.  
  
The laugh that Zenyatta had managed to not let free earlier, this time it finally came undone. He laughed in exhilaration at all the new sensations that he was experiencing in such a short amount of time. A rambunctious sound that made him fall against the trunk of the tree, feeling the carved mountain of its body against his back, the sun kissing his face through the heart shaped leaves.  
  
“I see you're having fun all by yourself” a deep, calm voice said somewhere close to him, above him.  
  
Zenyatta wasn't surprised by it though, or even scared. It was like he had been waiting in that place for someone to come. And finally they had arrived.  
  
Cracking one eye open (what a fascinating thing being able to turn off voluntarily one's sight without losing data!), he could see there was a man standing on his left, one hand on the tree's trunk as support and lightly leaning towards him.  
  
Through the game of light and shadows Zenyatta couldn't discern everything of the figure, the downside of human eyes, but the man must have been tall and bald, the profile line of his head perfect against the rays of sun.  
  
“No! Yes! Maybe...” he found himself saying very quickly following an unknown script outside of his will, trying to defend himself from a perceived slight with whom he could have offended the man. “Everything here feels so odd. But I'm sure I'm going to enjoy myself more now that you're here.”  
  
It was a dream, he had to remind himself.  
  
“I'm glad to see you've not forgotten about me,” the man gently smiled, and his mile was so big and pure that it could have encompassed the whole world in the stretch of those lips.  
  
Zenyatta's heart fluttered. Well that was definitely another new sensation. Something he wasn't sure he was ready for, his breath irregular and his tongue dancing funnily in his mouth for the right words to say. Words that almost didn't feel like they belonged to him and yet were his to say.  
  
“I could never forget about you, master.”  
  
His hand rose in the air, there for the man to take.  
  
He did. With Zenyatta's hand in his own, the man sat down next to him, shoulders touching.  
  
Zenyatta could feel the warmth of the man skin against his own, their yellow and orange tunics doing nothing to keep their bodies separated. It was the most comforting sensation that he had ever felt. Their skins touching in whatever way possible, that was it. Be it a brief brush of hands, an attentive shaving of the head or something even more intimate.  
  
From where those fleeting memories where coming from, Zenyatta didn't know. It was a dream, he had to remember it.  
  
Still, his curiosity wasn't sated.  
  
“But master, where are we exactly?” he asked, in a voice that barely was his own, sounding different in his head.  
  
“My brilliant student, always so inquisitive, always so sharp,” the man laid his head against Zenyatta's shoulder and like he was compelled by the force of habit, he reclined his own head against the man's. He could feel the warm breath of the man sneak under his tunic and travel on his shivering skin whenever he spoke.  
“This place is not here nor now, as you might have noticed, because I'm not here anymore. It's somewhere else. In a different moment of time. In a different life probably, but if past or future neither I do know.”  
  
For a long moment both of them stayed in silence but then the man whispered. “Still, it's nice to spend some time with you again. I'm grateful.”  
  
“I miss you!” Zenyatta blurted out. It was a dream.  


“I know,” the man answered him, a great sadness taking over his expression and creasing the dots that adorned his forehead. Zenyatta was utterly in love with his eyes.  
“I miss you too.”  
  
The scene started to loose its consistence. The branches of the tree extended to the extreme end of the light, heart shaped leaves becoming spears, and the water falling in the background sounded like thousands of thunders hitting at the same time.  
  
“Time's already up...” the man sighed, looking at the world changing around them. Effortlessly, like the gravity of that deteriorating world didn't have any hold on him, the man changed his position, almost sitting in front of Zenyatta, shadowing him from the horrors. It was a dream. It was a dream. It was a dream!  
  
“Don't forget that the world is still kind, my love,” the man whispered on his lips before kissing them. It was the shortest, lightest kiss that Zenyatta had ever experienced.  
  
It was a dream.  
  
And then he woke up.  
  
He woke up with metallic arms around his shoulders, hugging him close to a chest of mostly wires yet still partly human and warm.  
  
“Master! Master! Please... Please wake up!”  
  
Genji's terrified voice was too loud for his auditive sensor but Zenyatta's quickly working processors were already assessing the situation to understand what had caused the ruckus.  
  
“What seems to be the problem?” he could hear his own voice, a bit different from the usual. Like it came from somewhere else. Odd.  
  
Seeing that the omnic was acting normally again, Genji relented his hold on him, giving Zenyatta enough space to properly sit up.  
  
“You where... You had lightened up. Like you were a lamp. Beams of light were coming out of you. I was scared 'cause I've never seen you be that way...” explaining the situation was helping Genji calming down, his breath coming out slower with each sentence.  
  
Oh, so that was it.  
  
“I think I've never been this way. I think I was dreaming.”  
  
Zenyatta felt himself smile.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The writer quoted is Philip K. Dick, while the tree where Zen is resting is a ficus religiosa, or sacred fig. It's the same tree under which is believed that Gautama Buddha atteined enlightenment. Not relevant to the story but still interesting.
> 
> I hope you liked reading this story!! :D


End file.
